Molecular Ecology publishes papers that utilize molecular genetic techniques to address consequential questions in ecology, evolution, behaviour and conservation. We discourage papers that are primarily descriptive and are relevant only to the taxon being studied. Studies may employ neutral markers for inference about ecological and evolutionary processes or examine ecologically important genes and their products directly. Research areas of interest to the journal include: population structure and phylogeography, reproductive strategies,relatedness and kin selection, sex allocation, population genetic theory, analytical methods development, conservation genetics, speciation genetics, microbial biodiversity, genetic marker development, evolutionary, dynamics of QTLs, ecological interactions, molecular adaptation and environmental genomics, impact of genetically modified organisms.